Tag: Community Christian Church

I attended our Downers Grove information meeting yesterday. It was a great opportunity to get people into the room and tell them about the start of a new church in Downers Grove in January of 2018.

As Ted Coniaris (the campus pastor of Downers Grove) spoke, I was reminded about how wonderful a new church really is. I have attended dozens of information meetings about new churches. And every time, I am reminded that the start of a new church is the start of a new story.

Not just any kind of story – it’s a story that God has been writing since the dawn of time and it’s a story that He will continue to write. When you say yes to starting or being part of a church plant, you are saying yes to a new thing that God is doing in that community. It’s the start of a new story for that community.

Think about the implications of this: how often do you get to start something that will change people’s eternities? When you are part of a new church you truly do get a front row seat to see God do His thing. You get to be part of changing lives and possibly generations because when someone finds their way back to God the transformation reverberates out to their family, friends, neighbors, community and even the world. This is how we restore things to the way God intended them to be.

Oh yeah – there is one other reason to join a church plant. This will be an opportunity for God to do a new thing in your life. Mission gives life and the more you’re willing to be part of what God is doing, the more opportunity you give him to renew and refine you. It’s truly an opportunity for God to write the next chapter of your story.

Go HERE for more information about our Downer’s Grove launch and how you can be part of it.

CelGen is the time when all of Community’s locations give away the weekend offering to 4 teams. (Talk about generosity!)

NewThing is one of those teams. If you want to be part of CelGen, GO HERE.

To help people get to know NewThing a little better, we’ve been sending out stories on who we are and what we’re up to. I thought it would be fun to share some here.

This one comes from Jessie Vaca, Resources Champion

Resources are Fueling Movement

We have a BIG dream at NewThing: to have 10,000 churches in NewThing by 2020. To accomplish that goal, we are creating and compiling more resources for our churches. Celebration Generosity helps make this possible.

At NewThing we’re always looking for ways to be an asset to church planters and help make their new church plants wildly successful. This year, we’ve been working towards this goal is by offering a special set of Tools for new church planters called the NewThing Toolkit.

Based on a pay it forward model, church planters are able to take advantage of four incredible tools that most church planters don’t have access to right out of the gate. These resources are valued at $20,000. When a new church planter takes advantage of these great tools they then have the opportunity to reinvest those dollars over the next few years into providing those tools to other new church planters.

The tools provided through this important program will go a long way towards making their new church plants healthy and effective from the very start. Through this program we’re able to provide Coaching for the first year of their plant, Web Design services, Project Management assistance to make sure they’re not forgetting anything in the process of planting, and cutting edge Church Management Software.

Most church planters overlook the importance of these Tools or simply don’t budget to provide these services to their new church. However, by providing these resources up front, we’re giving these churches a head start and are helping to make them effective and successful from the very beginning.

Another way we’ve been working on helping new churches is by curating and developing new intellectual resources for everyone in NewThing. On our website (www.newthing.org) you can find tons of great resources that deal with topics from developing leaders in small groups all the way to creating networks of churches that will work together to plant more churches than they could on their own.

We’re really excited about our newest resource, The Network Leader Field Guide. Within this book are the ambitious steps that any church can take to become a network of reproducing churches that will accomplish the Jesus Mission through strategic church planting. There are also tons of great sample documents and forms that will help developing networks think through all the logistics of starting a church planting network.

We’re constantly looking for new and helpful resources we can create and curate to assist our church planters. We’re working hard to get the best content from some of the brightest minds in church planting into the hands of our NewThing church plants so that they can go after the Jesus Mission in new and exciting ways.

Thanks to your prayers and generosity we’re able to provide these and so many other tools and resources to churches within NewThing. Throughout the next year we hope to be able to continually expand what we can offer to help start even more reproducing churches!

CelGen is the time when all of Community’s locations give away the weekend offering to 4 teams. (Talk about generosity!)

NewThing is one of those teams. If you want to be part of CelGen, GO HERE.

To help people get to know NewThing a little better, we’ve been sending out stories on who we are and what we’re up to. I thought it would be fun to share some here.

This is from Cathleen Rotich, Global Residency Director.

Enjoy!

Generosity Goes Global: Global Residency

NewThing is a global conversation about church planting. Celebration Generosity is helping us equip and send young leaders to start reproducing churches all over the world. One of the ways we’re doing this is through our Global Residency Program

Our dream began as a conversation…what if we could train church planters…not just any church planter but those who could plant cross culturally…and not just that but that it be a cross cultural team training together and then plant together…and what if they could be trained in more than one church culture setting so that the training is not just theoretical but in-situ and practical in every sense of the word?

Celebration Generosity has allowed us to make a dream a reality.

Our NewThing Global Residency-July cohort kicked off in Nairobi, Kenya. A group of three couples and a single guy responded to this call for gospel adventure and started the journey together. This group of men and women have left the familiar to step into new territory and are being prepared to plant a church in a global gateway city around the globe.

The NewThing Global Residency Program involves many church networks coming together to create an environment of cross cultural exchange and learning. These global networks, host the Global Residents and expose them to church leadership in that cultural setting. The outcome expected is that the global resident with a broader world view of the global church. In this way, they are being prepared to plant a thriving church in a gateway city; which is defined as those cities around the world that have multiple cultures within it for example, New York, London, Dubai and Johannesburg.

This pioneer group consists of

Karan and Isha, an Indian family with two boys. He has led a ministry that has planted multiple churches in North India under tough circumstances.

Charles and Chero, are a Kenyan couple who have served for the past five years as church planters in a coastal city in Kenya. They bring church planting experience to the team.

Travis and Jen an American Couple, have travelled the farthest from Michigan, US to be part of the team and we get to enjoy the flavor of the North American church.

Justin, a Kenyan Church planter, who moved to Johannesburg and served in the Anglican Church for about 5 years before returning to Kenya. Justine’s desire for global missions and planting is tangible and he brings youth and flexibility and a lot of cross cultural experience.

Together, these residents paint a beautiful picture of Christs’ church reaching the utmost parts of the world and the power of unity!

Our goal is to train 40 of these Global Residents per year. Your generosity during Celebration Generosity will help us do just that!